Dude, the history behind the word dude is wild

For any child of the '80s or '90s, the word "dude" conjures up a specific vibe: a laid-back, California surfer-skater — perhaps drinking a white Russian — unbothered (or maybe unaware) of the pressing concerns of the world around him.

It was also a word that defied specificity — used as a greeting, an agreement, a commiseration or an exclamation.

"Dude" was everywhere.

But it wasn't a new word back then — not even close. By the 1980s, the term "dude" had been around for at least 100 years. In this week's Word of the Week, we explore the long and winding road "dude" took from New York City to the surfers in California.

Where did "dude" come from?

circa 1880: A man being assisted by his servant in the mode of dressing. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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The exact origin of the word has been difficult for linguists to pin down, but Gerald Cohen, a professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology, published a book on the topic in 2023 with two other language scholars. Cohen says it seems to have been coined in reaction to a particular fad among young men in New York City in the late 19th century. Think hipsters of the 1880s.

"They were young. They were vacuous. They were effeminate — and they were drawing a bit of attention from the humorists and the cartoonists," Cohen told NPR.

He says this crowd had a certain way of dressing — usually over-the-top and fancy — and leaned into an Anglophile lifestyle that was often perceived by many as fake or trying-too-hard.

Eventually, these men became known as "dudes," likely in reference to Yankee Doodle, who, as the old war song goes, was an unsophisticated American who "stuck a feather in his cap" in an attempt to parade as a kind of European "dandy" in high society.

Cohen and his colleagues spent more than 20 years trying to pinpoint the moment that reference was first made, combing over old newspaper archives and pop culture references from the time. They eventually found a poem published in a New York City newspaper titled "The Dude" written by a little-known poet named Robert Sale Hill, where he derides the fad.

Here are the final lines:

America can ill afford

To harbor such deformity,

And we would humbly thank the Lord

To spare us this enormity.

But, Cohen says, the poem had the opposite effect.

"It caused a social craze. All of a sudden 'dude' was appearing all over," he says.

An 1883 article from the New York Times describes a "dudes' picnic" where thousands of young people rushed to a park in Harlem at the promise of seeing men in "full dude dress."

The Dude Ranch

It was that over-the-top style of dress that brought about the term "dude ranch," experts say. In the late 19th century, traveling out West and experiencing cowboy culture was trendy. People — mostly men — would come from East Coast cities like New York to ranches on vacation, often dressed in full cowboy attire, according to Bryce Albright, executive director of the National Dude Ranchers Association, an organization that has been around for almost 100 years.

"It was a very big dress up for those people, because that's not something they owned, you know, before they decided to take this vacation," says Albright. "And so it kind of turned into our trademark."

Horses are prepared for a morning ride at the Dixie Dude Ranch near Bandera, Texas, Oct. 24, 2008.

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Ranches started advertising themselves as "dude ranches" to attract visitors, and the name stuck. So did the attire.

"And even still, you see people show up that have brand new Wranglers, and button pearl snap shirts and fancy boots and cowboy hats that none of us could ever even think of affording. And it's fun to see them get dressed up," she says.

The shift to the everyman

In the mid-20th century, the term "dude" traveled further across the country, making its way to African American and Mexican American populations, says Scott Kiesling, a linguistics professor at University of Pittsburgh who has also studied the word. The term's rise coincided with the zoot suit — also very flashy and full of fabric — and popular with men of color, he says.

He says originally, it seems they were called "dude" as more of a derogatory term.

Three Jamaican immigrants (left to right) John Hazel, a 21-year-old boxer, Harold Wilmot, 32, and John Richards, a 22-year-old carpenter, arriving at Tilbury on board the ex-troopship 'Empire Windrush', smartly dressed in zoot suits and trilby hats.

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"And then what we think happened — which is what happens in a lot of these kinds of situations —[Mexican American and Black people] adopted it with each other, and it became this marker of solidarity and connection," Kiesling says.

From there, it started to become less associated with fancy dress and more with masculinity, and other subgroups started to pick it up, particularly the surfers and skaters out in California — which is when Hollywood really got a hold of it in the 1980s and 90s.

Now, Kiesling says, the word, which began in reference to young men, has lost a lot of its gender connotation but is still meant to show familiarity with a person. Maybe you don't use it with your boss or a stranger, but with your friends or acquaintances to show that you're in the same group.

And don't be fooled — even with the rise of "bro" (see NPR's Word of the Week here), "dude" still reigns supreme, according to a recent survey Kiesling conducted.

"Dude is still used the most, I think people just don't notice it as much," he says.

Rock on, dude.
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